


we come to terms with our immortality

by deora



Category: Stoker (2013)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Long rambly sentences, Meta, Road Trips, Uncle/Niece Incest, introspection will be the death of us
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-04-29
Updated: 2013-05-08
Packaged: 2017-12-09 22:21:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/778626
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deora/pseuds/deora
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Charlie whispers her name like the prayer of a zealot. This is a love story.</p><p> </p><p>(Set immediately after the end of the film, if the film had ended with India and Charlie as the last living ones. Cliched AU. Hipster "Natural Born Killers" meets "Bonnie and Clyde". Alternating POVs.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> i'm flexing my writer muscles. i never used to write anything longer than a one-shot for a reason, but this fandom is giving me too many feels. we'll see how long it lasts. considering it's been years since i last wrote anything fannish, any and all concrit is more than appreciated! the slow build-up will hopefully lead to something more interesting than introspection.

The things that India misses the most from her former life would be surprising to anyone else but her. 

She calls it her former life because she likes to impose a seemingly objective distance between the now and anything that came before. Just another layer of proverbial dust gathering between the photographs of who she is now and those of India Stoker, quiet daughter of Evelyn and Richard Stoker. 

Her piano. Partly because of the important role it had in her education, but also partly because it was what had brought her and Charlie together for the first time. He had been a curiously mysterious grown-up and nothing more before he joined her by the piano that sullen sticky afternoon. Before he began to unravel her whole being with a waterfall of notes, fingers and energy. Before his arms wrapped around her, stoically catching up with her melody and taking it over to transform it into a whole other harmonic race. 

India lost track of the number of times she's reminisced about that particular memory, each time adding another layer of feeling that had been missing initially. She _knows_ there was as little actual physical contact between her and her uncle as possible, but, somehow, between the photo of then and now, her body learned to remember his cologne wrapping around her like summer. His face barely separated from the back of her head, barely breathing down her neck, as if almost afraid a louder exhale would unsettle the tableau. His shoulders – a reassuring presence, tensed but unflinching, all ready-to-catch-you-if-you-fall. His hands framing her hands on the infinite black-and-white scale like parentheses to the half-formed creature she was before he waltzed into her life. In some very integral way, he was as much her mother and father as Evie and Richard had been, but he had the advantage of novelty and a handsome, almost-boyish face on his side. 

Like her piano – a forgotten instrument of creativity, fantasy, escapism – he had helped her beyond any other human being. Helped her escape from a pent-up world of music sheets and black-and-white saddle shoes, into a world of endless unwinding highways, open skies, freedom. From – and within – herself. 

Her head now propped on her arm, out-stretched over the rolled-down window of the convertible, India watches Charlie from beneath half-lidded eyes. It's around that early magic hour photographers tend to get their panties in a twist about and, for once, India sees the appeal in the way the golden dawn light touches upon her uncle's face – her father's shades still on his nose. His hands casual reminders on the steering wheel, as if confident enough the car will magically drive itself to their destination, and for all India knows, perhaps it will. Magical vehicles wouldn't be the strangest thing in her life.

Charlie glances at her and smiles _his_ smile. Like a caricature of a well-meaning angel: perfectly coiffed dark hair – even with the wind in their faces, sparkling, cuttingly blue eyes, the left corner of his smile a bit higher than the right one. He is a dream, and India can see right through it, right down to the cracks in his foundation: a foundation built entirely around her name, as if she were the tree, and him the clinging, climbing vine, suffocating her, making her anew. He is a dream _of her_ and, with a sudden, completely unexpected twinge of panic, she realizes that the moment she chooses to wake up, he will dissolve just as dreamily. 

“What's the time?” India chooses to ask, choosing to pretend she's been dozing off.

“Time for breakfast!” He returns his attention to the road ahead and she glances up too, noticing for the first time the approaching town. 

They drove off the estate while it was still dark, after cleaning up Evie's bedroom, digging up one last grave, and leaving behind a cryptic 'Gone off to see the world!'-type of note in the kitchen, more an afterthought than anything else. Were she anyone else, were she _with_ anyone else, they might have also packed with them some regret, guilt, pain, extra baggage to carry along in case they got lonely on the road. India knows better than that, _is_ better than some vague disoriented notions of morality. Adrenaline rushing like nothing else through her veins, she assisted Charlie the entire night, no need for sleep or food or drink. She was more awake than ever and there was no doubt in her mind that had everything to do with her new orphaned, emancipated state. For eighteen years she'd been stuck in the chiaroscuro space between sleeping, dreaming and wakefulness, waiting for the spell to break. 

Charlie parks the car and turns off the engine. India recognizes with some amusement that they're in front of a Starbucks. She glances at him ready to comment on it before she notices the almost imperceptible flicker of hesitation in his shoulders. When he looks at her, she schools her features into a small smile and finds it to suffice. He gets out of the car first and comes around to open the door for her, the arrogant confidence restored. Mocking as if she needs help getting out of the car (as if she's anything like Evie!), as if she could mistake him for a real gentleman. He also holds the door to the shop open for her, his head the slightest bow when she can't fight a roll of the eyes, and goes to order while she finds a more inconspicuous table for two.

Looking around the bustling café, she can't remember ever being in a place as geared towards her age as this. Mostly young people – and people pretending to feel young at heart – and their computers, reading books carefully chosen to match the décor, gesticulating emphatically and over-enunciating keywords to mark them as specimens of interest. In this crowd, Charlie and India can pass as regulars, but India has seldom felt more distanced from a crowd, more like a hunter surveying a foreign habitat. As she watches Charlie make his way to their table, holding expertly two steaming mugs and a couple of croissants on a plate, she wonders if her feeling is mutual.

He's _radiating_. Full of life as he takes in the surroundings. His gaze is equally calculating, but holds more fascination than she could muster.

“Did you ever get to leave before my birthday?” Sounding clumsy even to her own ears, she takes a croissant and starts peeling the pastry. India notices not without any pleasure that he's taken by surprise as well. She feels possessive of his undivided attention.

“No,” Charlie shakes his head softly and leans back, an arm slung over the back of his chair. Composure regained. “I was allowed to leave as soon as I turned eighteen, but I knew that if I did, I wouldn't return. And I didn't want to miss your birthday.”

India looks up to assess his honesty and her lips part with a quiet sigh.

“It was important for me not to leave that place before seeing you.” 

Her ankles crossed, her knees pressed together under the table, it all comes back to her in a rush. What being looked at like _that_ , by _him_ , can do to her.

“I wanted you to be the first thing I saw, out there, in the real world.”

India is not going to tell him it never felt like the real world for her, not until he showed up. That would be too maudlin. That would be superfluous when he's looking at her as if she were the _entire_ real world condensed in the slender body of an eighteen-year-old. 

She can feel her face mirror back to him the same open smile, carbon copies of what contentment must look like for people like them.

“And... well, the many books I had were a bit old-fashioned, compared to this.” He adds eventually, surveying the café with what tries to pass as detachment but is unmistakably childlike wonder. She grins when he's not looking and finishes her croissant. He turns to her again and offers the second croissant with an infuriating smirk, but India is still too peckish to care.

“How long till we get to New York?” She asks as a distraction from his unsettling gaze.

“I was thinking we could make a detour. There's a few places on the way there I've always wanted to visit.” He offers it as a statement, but India understands the question. _Only if you want to._ She's as much a deciding agent as he is. Something in the way she looks at him makes his eyes darken like the ocean and he opens his mouth slightly. Charlie whispers her name like the prayer of a zealot. _India._ It reverberates in the suddenly cramped space between them like the echoes of the sea hidden deep in a sea-shell. 

She can feel her cheeks and neck flush with heat but she refuses to glance away. He reaches for her hand, stops mere inches above it, hovering like a cloud waiting to burst with rain. She flips her palm upwards, resting her hand back on the table underneath his, and she can feel the brief slide of skin against skin like a pain buried deep inside her. His hand gently covers her open palm then, and the world resumes its natural rhythms, sounds rushing back around their bubble, colours, lights, smells, a whole ecosystem of human life happening right outside of them. She can't remember if he touched her like that before, a touch so strikingly for the sake of a touch. Her hand moulds to his like an unexpected juxtaposition of images, but this comes as no surprise for her. His thumb presses right below her wrist, as if attempting to decipher the meaning behind her lines.

“I would like that very much,” she whispers just to see the minute break in his resolve, and the way he builds himself up again, in just seconds.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Still the first day in the New Adventures of India and Uncle Charlie(TM). Apologies for the slow-build-up, but it feels necessary in grounding the characters. The 'action' will pick up after this chapter, I expect. Concrit always appreciated!

India was born to mourn. 

Charlie had known that about her before he even laid eyes on her. 

He's not prone to over-indulgent introspection, but... But when he thinks about the eighteen long years spent dreaming her up (for, often, it feels like she's a perfect figment of his feverish imagination) and then glances at her perched in the passenger seat as they're driving across endless corn fields (peppered with the odd gathering of forlorn trees, and when is he going to tire of the constantly-shifting natural landscape, he ponders, and then smiles knowingly, _never_ ); when he studies her and thinks back to his 'education' with Mme Jacquin, he feels an almost spiritual rush of tranquility. She is just as he imagined her to be, in the absence of any tangible proof. 

Of course, he had Mrs McGarrick updating him every year with a recent photograph of 'Richard's little girl' and snippets of her development. Less often, Auntie Gin would pay him a quick and uncomfortable visit and spend most of it complaining about 'Richard's WASP-wannabe of a wife'. (He memorized everything. Everything about Richard's life, India, and, implicitly, his own future life.) But neither of the kindly old ladies would mention what they thought to be India's less than laudable qualities. Those Charlie guessed-- no, he knew them just as he knew those parts in himself. He was aware of India's being as if she had been an extra digit on his right hand. She would be hidden, cautious, blessed with a verdant inner life that few people (if any) could glimpse behind her scowls and silences. 

Whenever Charlie talked about her to Mme Jacquin, she would try to convince him that India (or the India he'd been writing all the letters to, the India he imagined to himself) was no more than a psychological crutch, a means for him to relate to other people and his immediate surroundings. He stopped bringing her up because he grew tired of having to defend something that to him was so poignantly, crucially _true_ , using words that could not even begin to grasp the complexity of their relationship. (Such is the fallible nature of human language, he sighs.) 

But, secretly, he continued to wish for her, knowing that if-- no, _when_ she turned out to be exactly as he'd dreamed her, she would be his absolution. If she were a dream come true, then all his other dreams could be true as well. She was his river bank, his Northern Star, his Omega, the center that guided him straight and true, the only reason everything else in this messy reality made any sense. India was the only way his entire life made sense.

And presently she had her head tilted back against the headrest, face following the arcing sun, her eyes closed but moving frantically beneath her leaf-eyelids. She was soaking up the sunlight like a sunflower and if India was content, his life must be content too. She had spent eighteen long years mourning for something (someone) she didn't even know, but now, just like that, the bereavement was over. 

Their life could begin.

And just like that, as if she knows what he has been thinking (as if she could not), she turns her face slightly towards him and barely opens her eyes. Watching her (from the corner of his eye) watch him through half-lidded eyes makes Charlie feel like the sun. 

As the car navigates the empty highway, the speeding fields start to change colour and slowly turn into mellow hills, dark woods, a whispering sound announcing the arrival of a river below, to the left of the road. Charlie turns his full attention ahead, scanning for something familiar. When he finds it, he stops the car to the side of the road. He becomes aware of India sobering up very quickly, a familiar survival instinct kicking in and sharpening her senses. She eventually turns to eye him inquisitively.

“Come, I want to show you something,” Charlie offers instead of an explanation, and offers her his hand, knowing full well she'll remember their touch from earlier in the morning. 

Challenges are where India excels, so she grasps his hand, and for a few seconds, he lingers in the present, all his soul hidden in not-quite-space between their clasped hands. He opens the door on his side of the car, still holding onto her hand, and she instinctively inches closer to him, so as not to increase the physical distance between them. With one big grin, Charlie steps out of the car and she nimbly crawls to the now-vacant driver's seat, before following him out of the car. 

He inhales deeply the sharp smell of forest, listens to the loud sound of the river in front of them, notices more fresh green, more moss on the river bank, less mud on the side of the road. If he wants to be sentimental, Charlie can even recognize the spot where he fell to his hands and knees and threw up his past.

“What happened here?” India asks evenly. She is still holding his hand, though.

“This is where he set me free.”

Charlie doesn't look at her but feels her entire body tense up, down to the tips of her fingers. Still mourning, then.

“He brought me here and told me he didn't love me enough to share you with me.” 

India knows the story, but he needs her to be physically here and relive his memory, so she can fully understand what it felt like to have his heart broken by his older brother. He lets go of her stiff hand and turns to face her, searching her eyes for a glimmer of redemption, a spark of 'I get it'. He gets lost in her dark green eyes and hears himself confessing: “I want you to know. I meant what I said. I am sorry for your loss.”

He swears he can see the _click_ in her whole body, in the way something akin to a tremor washes over her impassiveness like heavy rain. She places her soft hand back on his right wrist and brings it up to her face. Charlie opens his mouth, his eyes widening fractionally, but he doesn't yet know all the words to her song. She presses his open palm to her left cheek, and his hand is trapped between soft and soft, ivory and ivory, temptation and downfall. She tilts her head ever so lightly to the side, resting her cheek in his hand, in her hand, and he can see she's struggling to keep her eyes unblinkingly on him, a desperate flutter hidden behind her eyes, across her wide forehead, lost in her hair. He takes one decisive step towards her, her body radiating heat, no more excuses. His left hand moves to her other hand, forgotten by her side, circles her wrist, and he leans his forehead against her own, smiling back to her shuttered gasp. He whispers her name against her parted lips like his own private prayer. (This prayer goes _IndiaIndiaIndiaIndiaIndia_ but the chorus gets lost in the space between their mouths.)

Charlie suddenly has the vivid memory of watching India with that _boy_ in the forest at night. He remembers feeling stirred to the bone as he watched her take full control, push that _boy_ against a tree and ravage him. This time she feels like a doe entrapped and he relishes his pretense at control. (Feeble at best, for he knows he is just as entrapped as her.) The way she almost but not-quite moans as his lips brush softly like a dream across her own. The way she wants it as badly as he does but will not budge. (Perhaps his grasp at control is even weaker than he thought.)

When he presses his open mouth to hers, Charlie wants to stop time, slow down the revolutions of the planets, bring the Universe down to a whimpering halt, but she parts her lips to welcome him and sighs her whole being into him. A slide of tongues and a bump of teeth, and her left hand moves to his neck, the fingers on her right hand twining with his and clutching tightly. India's whole body vibrates like a keening musical instrument and Charlie has never kissed anyone without thinking of her, of this very moment. He takes one-two steps, pushing her back against the car, the pressure exquisite on every inch of his body flushed against hers. India's hand at the base of his neck sketches strangling motions in the rhythm of their mouths devouring one another. One hand delving to cradle the back of her skull, hidden by her loose hair, the other grasping at her hand, Charlie loses himself in her not-quite embrace, wanting to surround her body entirely with his own, as if that were the sole purpose he was created for. To be an extra layer of skin for India Stoker's body.

One of them shudders into the kiss (as if no amount of heat outside their bodies could match the heat inside), but it doesn't matter who, because the other one does too. They pull apart, panting, flushed, like the secret teenagers they really are. Charlie sees his distorted reflection in India's wide eyes, and that is who he chooses to be for the rest of his life. Their white-knuckled hands have left red marks on his neck, her jaw, on each other's hands, but that is not what he sees or feels. He sees a wild forest, a pulling dark tunnel in her eyes, and feels India on his lips, his tongue, sweet like croissants, bitter like dark coffee. Her hipbones pressing into his, her knees bumped against his, her entire being framed by his. They are jutting bones and flesh that only make sense together. Charlie's found his absolution.

It feels like hours, but only seconds later, India looks downwards, in a mockery of bashfulness, and Charlie steps away reluctantly. He leans against the car door, eyes still glued to her face. He watches her lift her head again, in renewed examination of the scene before her, the whispering river, the wistful trees, the empty road. She crosses the road and kneels to pick something up off the ground. For the tiniest fraction of a second, Charlie believes she somehow found the same sharp rock he used against Richard, but he then shakes his head and crosses his arms against his chest. India walks back to the car with a small, odd-shaped rock (not the same one, he observes), and gets into the passenger seat without another glance at him. As he turns to get inside the car as well, he sees her sneak the rock into her brown leather satchel, like a secret souvenir.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you noticed some stark differences between the introspection/writing style of the first chapter and this one, cookies for you! Alternating POVs and all. While I think Charlie and India are dangerously alike in fundamental ways, I'm also trying to underline their differences in the ways they reason. Thus: #noregrets for incoherence!


End file.
